|
Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 28, 2010 8:10:36 GMT -5
Published last April (i.e. April 2010) the book by Jeff Goodell "How to Cool the Planet". In this presentation from Seattle we see a confrontation between Jeff Goodell and the chemtrails activist Rebecca Campbell (after about 46 minutes). www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/223876
|
|
|
Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 29, 2010 23:26:45 GMT -5
My comment:
At a public presentation of Goodell’s book in Seattle in April 2010, a “chemtrails” activist Rebecca Campbell made an attempt to expose its author as a “disinfo agent”, asking both him and the audience rhetorically if they ever look at the sky, outlining the chemtrails activist position that aerosol geoengineering is no mere theoretical proposal but has been an ongoing global reality for well over a decade. Ms Campbell’s intervention was not effective and was in any case in my opinion not an appropriate way to confront an exponent of the “soft cop” version of support for geoengineering. Goodell makes it perfectly clear in his book that a key criterion (legally and politically speaking) in the geoengineering discussion is “intentionality”, and that once it is admitted that weather and climate modification is being carried out deliberately, the question of “climate justice” will arise. And because Goodell and the “good cop” geoengineers generally are not willing, or do not feel able, to provide leadership for such a global “climate justice” undertaking they are, and remain, obliged to persist in their position that no intentional geoengineering programmes are in operation.
Applying traditional rules of morality and conceptions of proper process in either science or statesmanship, the stance of these scientists and their political and journalistic supporters seems almost adolescent in the expectations it makes of “others”. “If we lived in a rational world,” says Goodell , “instead of diminishing the political will to reinvent our energy economy, the prospect of geoengineering would alarm us enough to boost it.” This amounts to wishful thinking that exposure to the proposals of the geoengineers could frighten the public into purposeful and positive action: a forlorn hope that fear can be enlisted to take the place of scientific and/or political leadership. What distinguishes this mindset from the attitude of oppressors throughout history?
All the evidence suggests that fear strengthens climate change skepticism. It does not undermine it. One of the (blustering and similarly adolescent) reflexes from which climate change skepticism derives its dynamism is its refusal to be frightened by “danger-mongering ecologists and leftists” (or “liberals”, to use the American terminology). The “Global Dimming” documentaries screened in English-speaking countries around five years ago evidently failed to achieve their aim of increasing support for cuts in carbon emissions. The reason for this failure, in my opinion, was the over-reliance on fear and corresponding censoring out of focused political analysis. “Global Dimming” was portrayed as the result of specifically non-intentional “particle pollution”, not of geoengineering, theoretical or actual. .
Jeff Goodell’s “How to Cool the Planet” is undoubtedly a step forward from the Global Dimming documentaries, and in that sense Goodell deserves the congratulations that were extended to him by Rebecca Campbell. (“I .thanked Mr. Goodell for at least minimally exposing this long-concealed subject to public view.”)
When it comes to leadership, it is only the Rebecca Campbells that are in a position to provide it. People with the status of “players” are obliged to keep dissembling (though there are also, of course, unfortunately, many would be guarantors of “climate justice” who continue to assume that the dissembling “players” are in fact sincere). The “chemtrails” activists are in a position to lead, and would be leading by now if they had attained the reflexes and the level of understanding required of leaders.
|
|